Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I’m not really a fan of the new show; I’ve only seen it a few times, but I’m definitely a fan of the old shows and the old games. I used to watch the old shows every chance I could when I was young, but it wasn’t until I was older, that I actually got chance to play the old games. I managed to get through those without much challenge and this is the same. There are plenty of enemies however, and depending on your difficulty setting, there can be even more.

You start the game, choosing your character. The levels depend on which character you pick and all of the levels are different, which seems to ad much to this game. There are 16 levels in all, meaning there really isn’t much per character, but the game as a whole is just as long as many other games like this. Many of the levels are 2-D, and there’s really nothing ‘unique’ about them. They’re just regular old, 2-D levels. But that’s not all; there are also some levels in the game that use mode-7 styling. Donatello flies through the air, shooting at homing missiles aimed for him. Raphael speeds through the streets on his motorcycle against Casey. Michelangelo skateboards through a tunnel avoiding obstacles, and Leonardo drives through a tunnel in a tank-like vehicle, shooting at incoming mousers. All of these levels provide some variety to this title.

The ninja turtles all have unique abilities and it’s pretty easy to defeat all of the enemies, but there’s so much of it, it really doesn’t matter. The combo system is really lacking, it’s definitely not Tekken. However, there are some pretty cool combos, like pressing B,B,B,d+B_u+B, you’ll do a nice variation. Otherwise, you rapidly press B to fight, and A to jump out of the way, so it really doesn’t take that much skill to complete. But there’s so much action, you can play around with moves and it stays fun until the end.

To try to extend game play, Konami put in a crystal collection. I don’t think it ads much to the game; it just proves to be a pain in the ass. That’s another thing I could live without. Since we’re talking faults now, I’d like to address something. The cut screens, I’ve skipped almost all of them. They are B-O-R-I-N-G. I could do without them. They take so long to go through and don’t really add much to the game. My advice is to just skip them, they are just damn annoying.

Now let’s close this up talking about graphics. There’s not really much to say about them considering there’s nothing wrong with them. Konami didn’t just change the colors; they made each character have their own movements and styles. The backgrounds are staged to fit into the new shows, which they do from what I’ve seen of the shows.